January 5, 2011 • 26 mins
As one of the most influential writers in the English language, Shakespeare is typically associated with cultural sophistication rather than violent bouts of near-anarchy. But this wasn't the case during the Astor Place Riot. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Farah Dowdy and I'm reporting. And a while ago,
in fact, right around Halloween, Katie and I talked about
(00:21):
the McBeth curse, which is a pretty interesting, spooky subject.
And I mean, there are lots of incidents of the Macbeth,
the supposed McBeth curse, but one that we mentioned was
the Astor Place riot and it's considered the worst, most
violent theatrical riot in American history. And I thought about
(00:42):
it again recently after reading Dan simmons book Drewid and Um.
In it, William Charles McCready is actually a character and
the story of this riot is recounted, and it kind
of piqued my interest. Yeah, it has a lot of
bizarre elements in it. We're going to look at theater
his a little bit, the lives of these two famous
(01:02):
actors who were sort of opposites, and British American Ford
relations in the eighteen hundreds, and the early American class
tensions and even some Tammany Hall politics. But the best
part of it, we're looking at all of that in
the context of a riot, So, I mean it's pretty exciting,
and um, I guess just to kick us off, we'll
(01:23):
go through our play bill and introduce the two main
players in this drama. One is a British intellectual and
the other is a rugged American. Right. Well, the British
intellectual is William Charles McCready, and in eighteen forty nine
May of that year, actually he was in the United
States to perform a farewell engagement at Manhattan's finest theater,
(01:45):
which was the Astor Place Opera House. McCready at this
time was considered an intellectual actor, but one with a
lot of intensity. And despite his aristocratic reputation and popularity
with the finer sorts, finer classes, he had gotten into
acting because he didn't have enough money to go to
law school. Yeah, so he he had a humble element
(02:06):
to his origins, which is conveniently forgotten later in this podcast.
But at this point McCready was far along in his
theatrical career. He's fifty six years old. I mean, after all,
this is his farewell tour and he's a huge success.
He played every major role. Uh. He debuted as Romeo,
he played Hamlet, Iago Lear, Othello Richard the Third, but
(02:29):
he was most famous for his Macbeth. It was his
signature role, and he's also known for his decided ideas
about how theater should be done. While managing two of
London's finest theaters, Drewy Lane and Covent Garden, McCready was
able to establish new expectations for productions. So he introduced
things that were kind of revolutionary at the time. Actors
(02:50):
would rehearse together, which seems obvious nowadays, but I guess
they used to rehearse individually before. Yeah, at the time,
I almost feel like a play was more about going
to see the big soliloquies with your favorite stars, and
so they would learn their lines in private and interpret
them however they wanted, and then come together, and you
have to imagine the end product would be sort of
(03:11):
a mishmash, right, So McCready changed that and he made
it more similar to what it is today, people rehearsing together.
He also wanted the costumes to be more historically accurate,
and the sets and props would compliment the plays, and
probably most importantly, he revolutionized the way that Shakespeare was performed,
because up until this point they would perform corrupted versions
(03:36):
of these what seemed to us um like plays you
could never touch, you know, why would you want to
mess with Shakespeare? But at the time, like king Lear
had a happy ending, a hundred and fifty years of
king Lear with a happy ending. I don't really see
the point. I don't even know how you do that.
But I guess McCready didn't see the point of something
(03:57):
like that either, And so at his houses when they
at Shakespeare, they would do Shakespeare. It might be shortened,
but it wouldn't be a corrupted version. Yeah, And in
the United States there were also some major shakeups going
on in the way Shakespeare was performed at that time
as well, And it was all because of a guy
named Edwin Forrest, who was an actor thirteen years McCready's jr.
(04:17):
And a protege of Edmund Keane, who was regarded generally
as the greatest English actor of his time, and forest
emotionally intense frank performance of Othello in New York City
in six had made his name, and like McCready, also
brought that same intensity to his roles, and rugged good
looks helped him as well a little bit. Yeah, he
(04:38):
was very all American and uh, it ultimately made him
a hero of the Shakespeare loving working classes, which at
the time, everybody loved Shakespeare. I mean, it was common reading.
It was common for working class people to have Shakespeare
partially memorized and to entertain each other by reciting soliloquies. Um.
(05:00):
But just because Forest has impressed a large part of
the American theater going population, some of the critics were
less impressed, and the New York Tribune critic William Winter writes,
it's really scathing commentary and calls Forest quote a vast
animal bewildered by a grain of chene. That was harsh cutting.
(05:23):
William Winter definitely, well, one thing, there was something that
the two men had in conton the British and the American.
They both had an interest in national play rights. Yeah,
I mean, we think of nineteenth century British literature as
a time of great novels. But McCready really wanted people
to focus on play. So he was encouraging writers of
(05:44):
his time in his country to write more plays and
get out there and focus on that. Forest meanwhile, set
up a contest for the writing of American plays, and
he gets some that he likes John Augusta Stone's Metamora
and Robert montgomery Birds Gladiator, which was considered the beginning
of native, homegrown American drama. Yeah, and Forest ideal out
(06:08):
of all of this was to have American theater free
itself from English plays. I mean, I'm sure he didn't
entirely want to do away with someone like Shakespeare, but
really have its own identity. So it's easy to see
where this is going. It's easy to see how a
professional rivalry between two men of such great stature in
(06:29):
their own countries would develop, and they did become professional rivals,
and the rift apparently stemmed from Forest tour of England
in the eighteen thirties. He hissed during one of McCready's
London plays, and yeah, it's very rude and um. Some
accounts said that that was due to a misunderstanding, but
(06:50):
I never found anything that provided further explanation in that,
and I have a hard time imagining how you would
accidentally hiss someone at a play. And Forest pretty much
defended his actions, so all McCready was left to do
was pretty much dismissed the whole thing. And he also
wrote about how annoying and trivial. This whole situation was
(07:11):
in his diaries, so he didn't really strike back per se,
but he definitely expressed his displeasure. Yeah, we can imagine
Forest saying I have a right to him and if
I want, while McCready is just so annoyed by the
whole the whole story and anything taking attention away from
what's really going on the play. Yeah, but Forest followers
(07:33):
were really devoted to him, and they saw macready style
as um not emotionally intense enough. It was intellectual and cold.
It wasn't their cup of tea. And so this back
and forth feud begins between the followers of these two men.
And it could be anything from um Forest followers causing trouble,
(07:55):
you know, causing disturbances at McCready's plays, hissing or cat calling,
to um McCready's followers making sure that the finest London
literary society was closed. Forest, so just getting at each other,
the followers just bickering back and forth for years, and yeah,
went on for years. And there's more to it than
(08:19):
just the acting aspect too. It was also about what
the men stood for, and we've mentioned a little bit
of that. It was the obvious national breakdown. McCready being English,
Forest being American. It's the eighteen forties, but there's still
some Anglo American tensions left over from the American Revolution
and the War of eighteen twelve, so that stuff hadn't
(08:40):
entirely disappeared. Yeah, that's hanging over over this whole story.
But it's also about class. And McCready is the favorite
actor of the elite and the New York aristocracy that
just love everything about English society. And according to the
theater professor Bruce McConochie, the Forest propaganda actually called McCready
(09:03):
the pet of princes, which is that's pretty cruel, isn't
it um, Whereas Forest have this bold style and these
tammany hall connections, and he's of course the favorite of
the working man. So it's a it's a class division, yeah,
And I mean I think it was put well by
Forest biographer Richard A. Moody. He said, no other actor
(09:26):
could churn up the emotions of the American audiences as
forested with his stormy kind of renderings of Shakespeare's tragic heroes,
or his passionate, patriotic impersonation of any one of a
half dozen freedom loving zeal it's struggling against tyrannical oppression.
So kind of a long quote, but I think it
expresses the way working class people identified with Forest. Yeah,
(09:47):
it expresses Forest effect on them too. Um. So clearly
more is at stake than who's your favorite actor. And
the newspapers label this rivalry the rich against the poor,
so can see where this is going, definitely fueling it.
So you'd think that promoters wouldn't go looking for trouble
in this heated scenario by staging these two men playing
(10:10):
the same role in the same city on the same night,
But that's exactly what ends up happening. Yeah. So in
early May nine, there are two placards all over New
York City. One advertisers McCready at the Astro Placed Opera
House playing Macbeth. The other advertisers Forest at the Broadway Theater,
again playing Macbeth. Um. But the managers are hoping. They're
(10:34):
not expecting a riot to come out of this. They're
just hoping that they'll sell all their tickets and pack
their houses and maybe people get a little stirred up. Yeah,
I mean I can see that logic too, But they
start to realize that that's not necessarily the case when
a manager for Astro Place goes out and gives away
some free tickets on May seven, forty nine, the day
(10:54):
of the show, and when he returns to the opera house,
he finds out that most of them have already been
snatched up. He suspects that it wasn't all macready fans
who wanted these tickets he was giving away. Yeah, he's
smell in trouble here, and so he asked the chief
police for protection at the show, just in case anything
goes down. Um. So it's the afternoon of the play
(11:17):
and the crowd starts building in front of the theater
long before the doors are set to open, and when
they finally do open, there's just a rush to get in.
And I can imagine going in the doors if you're
a regular theater goer at this time, and looking around,
it's not the normal crowd for Astor Place. The regulars
are in their boxes, but the floor is packed with
(11:39):
these tough looking men, and some are wearing shirt sleeves
of you know, horror, and all of them are wearing
their hats indoors and it seems like, I mean, that
would be menacing. Something is up, something's going to happen.
But they're all quiet and their patient. They're just waiting,
but they're also obviously communicating with each other with the
(12:00):
secret signals. Perhaps jokes. Yeah, some jokes get thrown around. Um,
so it's it's um, something's going to happen, right, So
then we have showtime. At about seven thirty, when the
play is about to start, they start stomping. It's something
called a tramp warning. Normally it would die off, but
(12:22):
in this case it starts to get louder. The theater
and chandeliers start to shake. Yeah, And when the play
goes on, there are cheers from the boxes from these
regular theater goers, these regular macready fan but there hisses
and cat calls and cock crows from everyone else and
kind of imagining different versions of the arrest development cock crows.
(12:45):
Um McCready is drowned out when he tries to start
speaking his lines, and he reacts pretty impressively to this.
I would say, at first, he just folds his arms
and he waits, you know, expecting that it. People start
to get a little embarrassed and maybe it'll die out
and they can't keep it up. Forever, right, he'll be
(13:05):
able to continue his performance. Then he stalks the stage
in front of the footlights. And I mean, this is
a man who sort of got his start playing villains,
um melodramatic villain. So I imagine he's got a great face,
a great villainous face, and I imagine he's throwing it
at the crowd as he stalks the footlights. And then
(13:26):
finally he just tries to outshout them, and he gets
part way through the act that way, even though nobody
can hear him. The cries are completely drowning him out.
Poor lady Macbeth enters and people shout obscenities at her,
so she basically flees the stage. Yeah, it's just getting
worse and worse instead of getting better. People thought maybe
if a lady was on stage, the crowd might have
(13:48):
a little more respect, But that's not quite what happens. Actually,
projectiles start coming at the stage at that point, for
potatoes than rotten eggs, Then a chair at McCready's head.
According to Joel Tyler Headley's seventy three account, someone shouts,
go off the stage, you English fool. Who three cheers
(14:11):
from ned Forest. Yeah, and then another chair comes and
so at this point McCready is worried he will be
killed and this will be his final tour and his
final performance of Macbeth. So he leaves the stage and
the curtain comes down, and um, that seems like it
should have been the end of this story. Unfortunately it's not. Um.
(14:34):
Theodore riots weren't terribly uncommon during this time. People would
riot over things like I thought the play was bad,
or I thought the music was bad. Um. But this
was going pretty far, and McCready certainly thought so, and
he resolved to cancel the engagement go back to England
on the next ship. But his American friends convince them otherwise. Yeah,
(14:58):
they actually published a petition about out it. They um
published this. It said to W. C. McCready, esquire, Dear
Sir the undersigned, having heard that the outrage at the
astor Place Opera House on Monday evening is likely to
have the effect of preventing you from continuing your performances
and from concluding your intended farewell engagement on the American stage.
(15:20):
Take this public method of requesting you to reconsider your decision,
and of assuring you that the good sense and respect
for order prevailing in this community will sustain you on
the subsequent nights of your performances. So pretty strong recommendation
to stay or please evaculous. Yep. Exactly forty seven people
sign this, among them Washington, Irving and Herman Melville. And
(15:44):
so McCready agrees. I mean, if Washington, Rman and Herman
Melville ask you to do something, yeah, definitely. And so
he decides to perform may temph the same play again
at Astra place. Yeah. But as soon as the placards
go up to advertise this return of the macready engagement,
other placards appear, and these ones are advertising forests playing
(16:08):
the character of the gladiator in the Broadway theater on
the same night, now that we know about gladiators, wondering
if he had to put on a little books a
little bit that one. Um. But there's another placard that
goes up to and this one is a lot more dangerous.
It's I mean, this is in all caps. You can
actually see this placard. Maybe I'll post it on Twitter
(16:29):
or Facebook. Um, but it says working men shall Americans
or English rule in this city. The crew of the
British steamer have threatened all Americans who shall dare to
offer their opinions this night at the English Aristocratic Opera House,
working men, freemen, stand up to your lawful rights. So
pretty serious. They're insinuating that if you go protest at
(16:53):
the Macready performance, English sailors will attack you. I mean yeah,
I mean drawing stuff before people assumed maybe it might
go off, Okay, this time there was no question. It's
gonna make people angry reading that, and there's gonna be trouble.
And so in this case, the police are already plugged in.
(17:16):
They're they're expecting some sort of trouble to go down
this time, and they're actually already inside of the Astplace
Opera House when the doors open. And so when the
doors open, instead of this crowd rushing in, um, only
ticket holders are allowed. Um, a few ruffians still get
in to make a little trouble. But then the theater
(17:36):
is locked, it's barricaded, the windows are all barricaded, and
everything is ready for the show. Um. Still some of
the people who made it in start their tramporning, and
I just I can't imagine why you would go to
this play. Imagine being locked and barricaded inside the theater. Yeah,
you'd have to be a big fan, you would have
(17:57):
to be a super fan, a major. I mean, it
was this final tour, I guess, so there's a motivation
to go, and the petition and every kill that they
killed at the theater as death by theater. But the
crowd worse than the crowd inside, and the few that
had gotten in. The crowd outside was the part that's
really intimidating. It had gotten enormous, some estimates put it
at about ten thousand to fifteen thousand people, and they
(18:19):
knocked out the street lamps, they threw stones, they tried
to break down the doors. Um and the police actually
had to start worrying about an actual attack on the cready. Yeah,
it seemed like there would be an attack from the
few people inside. And once they saw signs that an
attack might be made, that they might try to snatch
him off the stage, they started arresting a few of
(18:42):
the rioters who were inside the theater, and supposedly this
further insights the people outside if they get wind of this.
But after a time and mc cready continues to act.
After a time he leaves the stage. He sneaks out
through a private door, supposedly disguised as an officer on
horseback and escapes back to his hotel with friends. Um
(19:05):
gets out of it before it gets any worse, so
the performances over basically, then the militia has to arrive.
The rioters rush at the cavalry, driving them into retreat.
The infantry is battered by stones, and eventually it seems
like they're going to have to retreat or fire the crowd.
And there we should say to they're all of these
(19:26):
paving stones ready because there's a construction site nearby, so
it's like unlimited projectiles for the rioters conveniently enough. But yeah. Eventually,
Commanding Officer Major General Charles Stanford gives the order to
charge bayonet, but because the troops and the crowd are
in such close quarters, there's no room to charge. So
(19:48):
some of the crowd actually sees the soldiers muskets and
there are repeated warnings. Nobody really wants to open fire
on this crowd. Um repeated warnings to disperse or they'll
have to shoot. Finally, the sheriff gives the order to
fire blanks over the crowd's head because they realize their
blanks and they're going over their heads. It only incites
(20:09):
ridicule from the crowd and um, which is unfortunate. And
then finally the order is given to fire point blank.
But Low said that the metal be injured, not killed.
And Um, it's it's not just that the orders are
the people in charge are reluctant to give the orders.
The men are are reluctant to carry them out. They
don't feel right shooting um a civilian point blank in
(20:33):
their inn city, which makes sense, definitely, It wasn't something
that they wanted to do. But in the end they
do end up shooting on their orders. And this is
from an account of the terrific and fatal riot at
the New York Astro Placed Opera House. At last, the
awful word was given to fire. There was a gleam
of sulfurous light, a sharp, quick rattle, and here and
(20:55):
there in the crowd a man sunk upon the pavement
with a deep groan or a death rattle. So by
the third volley or so, the bystanders had dispersed, and
by the fourth the shooting seems pretty much unnecessary, so
they stopped. Yeah. Yeah, most people consider the fourth round
was uncalled for. Um. But at the end of the
whole thing, anywhere from twenty two to twenty four people
(21:18):
were dead, depending on which account you look at, and
most of them were bystanders, young working men with Irish
last names. Approximately a hundred people are wounded. A lot
of those are the soldiers hit by stones and um,
you know, this rage about the whole thing continues for
a little while. Their bonfires the next day to protest
(21:40):
the masaker. Um. Eventually, though, the tension started to die
down and McCready, of course, I mean he's not about
to be lured into a second return. Um. He gets
back to England as soon as possible for his farewell
tour there. He retired playing Macbeth in eight fifty and
in England, and he died twenty two years later. Um
(22:03):
Forest though, has kind of a sadder fate. I would say, yeah,
his reputation was seriously damaged after all of this, and
especially later when he was best known for this lawsuit
he was in with his actress wife. He sued his
wife for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and he
ended up losing the case, but he kept appealing it
(22:24):
for the next eighteen years. It was kind of the
scandal that was in the news, and he was kind
of almost known for that more than his acting, seems well.
And I mean he was known for these two scandals,
two very apparently very big scandals in the nineteenth century,
and his name is attached to both of them. Maybe
a little too much press um And according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
(22:45):
Forest spent his later years in quote his gloomy Philadelphia
mansion and he died only a few months before McCready. Um.
But kind of a final note on this whole thing,
if you're going to look at the broader history of
theatrical riots, there's a really great website called Shakespeare in
American Life. It's part of the folder Shakespeare Library and
(23:08):
I used it a lot um for the ship the
Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown episode two, which was about the tempest. Um.
But it's great. You know, their placards, pictures of the actors,
interviews with experts, um. And there's also some commentary from
Professor Bruce McConochie, who we mentioned earlier. And um. Apparently
(23:31):
theatrical riots had been really common before the Astra Place riot,
but they didn't continue too long after it. And part
of the reason why is because the municipal police department's
got a lot stronger around the middle of the century,
and so a riot like this just wasn't allowed to happen.
Of course there's still riots, but riots in um a
(23:53):
setting that should be so controlled, just didn't happen as much.
I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I'm glad we
can get the theater and piece these days. And that
brings us to listener mail. This letter is from Bethany,
and she says, Dear Sarah and Dablina, I just finished
listening to all of the stuff you missed in history
(24:14):
class podcasts and have really enjoyed them. But after listening
to the episode about the five amazing astronomical discoveries, I
just wanted to give Galileo some credit. While it would
definitely be painful and foolish to look through a telescope
at the sun, that's actually not how Galileo discovered sun spots. Rather,
he would hold a piece of paper at the eyepiece
of the telescope and trace the sun spots in the
(24:35):
light that came through the telescope. I learned this while
reading Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel, which I highly recommend. Well,
thank you Bethany for that cool little insight into Galileo's discovery.
Galilet's Daughter is actually one that's been on my list
for a while books to read. Yeah, and definitely after
the both the Tico Brahe podcasts and the Five Astronomical Discoveries,
(24:58):
I'm a lot more interested in the strong to me
now than I used to comman astronomy buff. Definitely, that's
what happened. Um. If you have any other favorite galle stories,
or if you have anything about theatrical history or Shakespeare,
I mean, Shakespeare podcasts have been pretty fun. I gonna
I'm gonna go out and say that. Yeah, and there's
many more that we could do. I mean, that's a
(25:18):
great thing about Shakespeare. There's always more stories exactly. So
if you have any great suggestions, feel free to email
us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on
Facebook where I'm going to definitely post this claquer that
helped incite the riot. Um And if you want to
search for any fun articles, you can do so by
(25:40):
going to our homepage at www dot how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
becausit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
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up has a rise. Download it today on iTunes Boom
(26:04):
Boom m
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Farah Dowdy and I'm reporting. And a while ago,
in fact, right around Halloween, Katie and I talked about
(00:21):
the McBeth curse, which is a pretty interesting, spooky subject.
And I mean, there are lots of incidents of the Macbeth,
the supposed McBeth curse, but one that we mentioned was
the Astor Place riot and it's considered the worst, most
violent theatrical riot in American history. And I thought about
(00:42):
it again recently after reading Dan simmons book Drewid and Um.
In it, William Charles McCready is actually a character and
the story of this riot is recounted, and it kind
of piqued my interest. Yeah, it has a lot of
bizarre elements in it. We're going to look at theater
his a little bit, the lives of these two famous
(01:02):
actors who were sort of opposites, and British American Ford
relations in the eighteen hundreds, and the early American class
tensions and even some Tammany Hall politics. But the best
part of it, we're looking at all of that in
the context of a riot, So, I mean it's pretty exciting,
and um, I guess just to kick us off, we'll
(01:23):
go through our play bill and introduce the two main
players in this drama. One is a British intellectual and
the other is a rugged American. Right. Well, the British
intellectual is William Charles McCready, and in eighteen forty nine
May of that year, actually he was in the United
States to perform a farewell engagement at Manhattan's finest theater,
(01:45):
which was the Astor Place Opera House. McCready at this
time was considered an intellectual actor, but one with a
lot of intensity. And despite his aristocratic reputation and popularity
with the finer sorts, finer classes, he had gotten into
acting because he didn't have enough money to go to
law school. Yeah, so he he had a humble element
(02:06):
to his origins, which is conveniently forgotten later in this podcast.
But at this point McCready was far along in his
theatrical career. He's fifty six years old. I mean, after all,
this is his farewell tour and he's a huge success.
He played every major role. Uh. He debuted as Romeo,
he played Hamlet, Iago Lear, Othello Richard the Third, but
(02:29):
he was most famous for his Macbeth. It was his
signature role, and he's also known for his decided ideas
about how theater should be done. While managing two of
London's finest theaters, Drewy Lane and Covent Garden, McCready was
able to establish new expectations for productions. So he introduced
things that were kind of revolutionary at the time. Actors
(02:50):
would rehearse together, which seems obvious nowadays, but I guess
they used to rehearse individually before. Yeah, at the time,
I almost feel like a play was more about going
to see the big soliloquies with your favorite stars, and
so they would learn their lines in private and interpret
them however they wanted, and then come together, and you
have to imagine the end product would be sort of
(03:11):
a mishmash, right, So McCready changed that and he made
it more similar to what it is today, people rehearsing together.
He also wanted the costumes to be more historically accurate,
and the sets and props would compliment the plays, and
probably most importantly, he revolutionized the way that Shakespeare was performed,
because up until this point they would perform corrupted versions
(03:36):
of these what seemed to us um like plays you
could never touch, you know, why would you want to
mess with Shakespeare? But at the time, like king Lear
had a happy ending, a hundred and fifty years of
king Lear with a happy ending. I don't really see
the point. I don't even know how you do that.
But I guess McCready didn't see the point of something
(03:57):
like that either, And so at his houses when they
at Shakespeare, they would do Shakespeare. It might be shortened,
but it wouldn't be a corrupted version. Yeah, And in
the United States there were also some major shakeups going
on in the way Shakespeare was performed at that time
as well, And it was all because of a guy
named Edwin Forrest, who was an actor thirteen years McCready's jr.
(04:17):
And a protege of Edmund Keane, who was regarded generally
as the greatest English actor of his time, and forest
emotionally intense frank performance of Othello in New York City
in six had made his name, and like McCready, also
brought that same intensity to his roles, and rugged good
looks helped him as well a little bit. Yeah, he
(04:38):
was very all American and uh, it ultimately made him
a hero of the Shakespeare loving working classes, which at
the time, everybody loved Shakespeare. I mean, it was common reading.
It was common for working class people to have Shakespeare
partially memorized and to entertain each other by reciting soliloquies. Um.
(05:00):
But just because Forest has impressed a large part of
the American theater going population, some of the critics were
less impressed, and the New York Tribune critic William Winter writes,
it's really scathing commentary and calls Forest quote a vast
animal bewildered by a grain of chene. That was harsh cutting.
(05:23):
William Winter definitely, well, one thing, there was something that
the two men had in conton the British and the American.
They both had an interest in national play rights. Yeah,
I mean, we think of nineteenth century British literature as
a time of great novels. But McCready really wanted people
to focus on play. So he was encouraging writers of
(05:44):
his time in his country to write more plays and
get out there and focus on that. Forest meanwhile, set
up a contest for the writing of American plays, and
he gets some that he likes John Augusta Stone's Metamora
and Robert montgomery Birds Gladiator, which was considered the beginning
of native, homegrown American drama. Yeah, and Forest ideal out
(06:08):
of all of this was to have American theater free
itself from English plays. I mean, I'm sure he didn't
entirely want to do away with someone like Shakespeare, but
really have its own identity. So it's easy to see
where this is going. It's easy to see how a
professional rivalry between two men of such great stature in
(06:29):
their own countries would develop, and they did become professional rivals,
and the rift apparently stemmed from Forest tour of England
in the eighteen thirties. He hissed during one of McCready's
London plays, and yeah, it's very rude and um. Some
accounts said that that was due to a misunderstanding, but
(06:50):
I never found anything that provided further explanation in that,
and I have a hard time imagining how you would
accidentally hiss someone at a play. And Forest pretty much
defended his actions, so all McCready was left to do
was pretty much dismissed the whole thing. And he also
wrote about how annoying and trivial. This whole situation was
(07:11):
in his diaries, so he didn't really strike back per se,
but he definitely expressed his displeasure. Yeah, we can imagine
Forest saying I have a right to him and if
I want, while McCready is just so annoyed by the
whole the whole story and anything taking attention away from
what's really going on the play. Yeah, but Forest followers
(07:33):
were really devoted to him, and they saw macready style
as um not emotionally intense enough. It was intellectual and cold.
It wasn't their cup of tea. And so this back
and forth feud begins between the followers of these two men.
And it could be anything from um Forest followers causing trouble,
(07:55):
you know, causing disturbances at McCready's plays, hissing or cat calling,
to um McCready's followers making sure that the finest London
literary society was closed. Forest, so just getting at each other,
the followers just bickering back and forth for years, and yeah,
went on for years. And there's more to it than
(08:19):
just the acting aspect too. It was also about what
the men stood for, and we've mentioned a little bit
of that. It was the obvious national breakdown. McCready being English,
Forest being American. It's the eighteen forties, but there's still
some Anglo American tensions left over from the American Revolution
and the War of eighteen twelve, so that stuff hadn't
(08:40):
entirely disappeared. Yeah, that's hanging over over this whole story.
But it's also about class. And McCready is the favorite
actor of the elite and the New York aristocracy that
just love everything about English society. And according to the
theater professor Bruce McConochie, the Forest propaganda actually called McCready
(09:03):
the pet of princes, which is that's pretty cruel, isn't
it um, Whereas Forest have this bold style and these
tammany hall connections, and he's of course the favorite of
the working man. So it's a it's a class division, yeah,
And I mean I think it was put well by
Forest biographer Richard A. Moody. He said, no other actor
(09:26):
could churn up the emotions of the American audiences as
forested with his stormy kind of renderings of Shakespeare's tragic heroes,
or his passionate, patriotic impersonation of any one of a
half dozen freedom loving zeal it's struggling against tyrannical oppression.
So kind of a long quote, but I think it
expresses the way working class people identified with Forest. Yeah,
(09:47):
it expresses Forest effect on them too. Um. So clearly
more is at stake than who's your favorite actor. And
the newspapers label this rivalry the rich against the poor,
so can see where this is going, definitely fueling it.
So you'd think that promoters wouldn't go looking for trouble
in this heated scenario by staging these two men playing
(10:10):
the same role in the same city on the same night,
But that's exactly what ends up happening. Yeah. So in
early May nine, there are two placards all over New
York City. One advertisers McCready at the Astro Placed Opera
House playing Macbeth. The other advertisers Forest at the Broadway Theater,
again playing Macbeth. Um. But the managers are hoping. They're
(10:34):
not expecting a riot to come out of this. They're
just hoping that they'll sell all their tickets and pack
their houses and maybe people get a little stirred up. Yeah,
I mean I can see that logic too, But they
start to realize that that's not necessarily the case when
a manager for Astro Place goes out and gives away
some free tickets on May seven, forty nine, the day
(10:54):
of the show, and when he returns to the opera house,
he finds out that most of them have already been
snatched up. He suspects that it wasn't all macready fans
who wanted these tickets he was giving away. Yeah, he's
smell in trouble here, and so he asked the chief
police for protection at the show, just in case anything
goes down. Um. So it's the afternoon of the play
(11:17):
and the crowd starts building in front of the theater
long before the doors are set to open, and when
they finally do open, there's just a rush to get in.
And I can imagine going in the doors if you're
a regular theater goer at this time, and looking around,
it's not the normal crowd for Astor Place. The regulars
are in their boxes, but the floor is packed with
(11:39):
these tough looking men, and some are wearing shirt sleeves
of you know, horror, and all of them are wearing
their hats indoors and it seems like, I mean, that
would be menacing. Something is up, something's going to happen.
But they're all quiet and their patient. They're just waiting,
but they're also obviously communicating with each other with the
(12:00):
secret signals. Perhaps jokes. Yeah, some jokes get thrown around. Um,
so it's it's um, something's going to happen, right, So
then we have showtime. At about seven thirty, when the
play is about to start, they start stomping. It's something
called a tramp warning. Normally it would die off, but
(12:22):
in this case it starts to get louder. The theater
and chandeliers start to shake. Yeah, And when the play
goes on, there are cheers from the boxes from these
regular theater goers, these regular macready fan but there hisses
and cat calls and cock crows from everyone else and
kind of imagining different versions of the arrest development cock crows.
(12:45):
Um McCready is drowned out when he tries to start
speaking his lines, and he reacts pretty impressively to this.
I would say, at first, he just folds his arms
and he waits, you know, expecting that it. People start
to get a little embarrassed and maybe it'll die out
and they can't keep it up. Forever, right, he'll be
(13:05):
able to continue his performance. Then he stalks the stage
in front of the footlights. And I mean, this is
a man who sort of got his start playing villains,
um melodramatic villain. So I imagine he's got a great face,
a great villainous face, and I imagine he's throwing it
at the crowd as he stalks the footlights. And then
(13:26):
finally he just tries to outshout them, and he gets
part way through the act that way, even though nobody
can hear him. The cries are completely drowning him out.
Poor lady Macbeth enters and people shout obscenities at her,
so she basically flees the stage. Yeah, it's just getting
worse and worse instead of getting better. People thought maybe
if a lady was on stage, the crowd might have
(13:48):
a little more respect, But that's not quite what happens. Actually,
projectiles start coming at the stage at that point, for
potatoes than rotten eggs, Then a chair at McCready's head.
According to Joel Tyler Headley's seventy three account, someone shouts,
go off the stage, you English fool. Who three cheers
(14:11):
from ned Forest. Yeah, and then another chair comes and
so at this point McCready is worried he will be
killed and this will be his final tour and his
final performance of Macbeth. So he leaves the stage and
the curtain comes down, and um, that seems like it
should have been the end of this story. Unfortunately it's not. Um.
(14:34):
Theodore riots weren't terribly uncommon during this time. People would
riot over things like I thought the play was bad,
or I thought the music was bad. Um. But this
was going pretty far, and McCready certainly thought so, and
he resolved to cancel the engagement go back to England
on the next ship. But his American friends convince them otherwise. Yeah,
(14:58):
they actually published a petition about out it. They um
published this. It said to W. C. McCready, esquire, Dear
Sir the undersigned, having heard that the outrage at the
astor Place Opera House on Monday evening is likely to
have the effect of preventing you from continuing your performances
and from concluding your intended farewell engagement on the American stage.
(15:20):
Take this public method of requesting you to reconsider your decision,
and of assuring you that the good sense and respect
for order prevailing in this community will sustain you on
the subsequent nights of your performances. So pretty strong recommendation
to stay or please evaculous. Yep. Exactly forty seven people
sign this, among them Washington, Irving and Herman Melville. And
(15:44):
so McCready agrees. I mean, if Washington, Rman and Herman
Melville ask you to do something, yeah, definitely. And so
he decides to perform may temph the same play again
at Astra place. Yeah. But as soon as the placards
go up to advertise this return of the macready engagement,
other placards appear, and these ones are advertising forests playing
(16:08):
the character of the gladiator in the Broadway theater on
the same night, now that we know about gladiators, wondering
if he had to put on a little books a
little bit that one. Um. But there's another placard that
goes up to and this one is a lot more dangerous.
It's I mean, this is in all caps. You can
actually see this placard. Maybe I'll post it on Twitter
(16:29):
or Facebook. Um, but it says working men shall Americans
or English rule in this city. The crew of the
British steamer have threatened all Americans who shall dare to
offer their opinions this night at the English Aristocratic Opera House,
working men, freemen, stand up to your lawful rights. So
pretty serious. They're insinuating that if you go protest at
(16:53):
the Macready performance, English sailors will attack you. I mean yeah,
I mean drawing stuff before people assumed maybe it might
go off, Okay, this time there was no question. It's
gonna make people angry reading that, and there's gonna be trouble.
And so in this case, the police are already plugged in.
(17:16):
They're they're expecting some sort of trouble to go down
this time, and they're actually already inside of the Astplace
Opera House when the doors open. And so when the
doors open, instead of this crowd rushing in, um, only
ticket holders are allowed. Um, a few ruffians still get
in to make a little trouble. But then the theater
(17:36):
is locked, it's barricaded, the windows are all barricaded, and
everything is ready for the show. Um. Still some of
the people who made it in start their tramporning, and
I just I can't imagine why you would go to
this play. Imagine being locked and barricaded inside the theater. Yeah,
you'd have to be a big fan, you would have
(17:57):
to be a super fan, a major. I mean, it
was this final tour, I guess, so there's a motivation
to go, and the petition and every kill that they
killed at the theater as death by theater. But the
crowd worse than the crowd inside, and the few that
had gotten in. The crowd outside was the part that's
really intimidating. It had gotten enormous, some estimates put it
at about ten thousand to fifteen thousand people, and they
(18:19):
knocked out the street lamps, they threw stones, they tried
to break down the doors. Um and the police actually
had to start worrying about an actual attack on the cready. Yeah,
it seemed like there would be an attack from the
few people inside. And once they saw signs that an
attack might be made, that they might try to snatch
him off the stage, they started arresting a few of
(18:42):
the rioters who were inside the theater, and supposedly this
further insights the people outside if they get wind of this.
But after a time and mc cready continues to act.
After a time he leaves the stage. He sneaks out
through a private door, supposedly disguised as an officer on
horseback and escapes back to his hotel with friends. Um
(19:05):
gets out of it before it gets any worse, so
the performances over basically, then the militia has to arrive.
The rioters rush at the cavalry, driving them into retreat.
The infantry is battered by stones, and eventually it seems
like they're going to have to retreat or fire the crowd.
And there we should say to they're all of these
(19:26):
paving stones ready because there's a construction site nearby, so
it's like unlimited projectiles for the rioters conveniently enough. But yeah. Eventually,
Commanding Officer Major General Charles Stanford gives the order to
charge bayonet, but because the troops and the crowd are
in such close quarters, there's no room to charge. So
(19:48):
some of the crowd actually sees the soldiers muskets and
there are repeated warnings. Nobody really wants to open fire
on this crowd. Um repeated warnings to disperse or they'll
have to shoot. Finally, the sheriff gives the order to
fire blanks over the crowd's head because they realize their
blanks and they're going over their heads. It only incites
(20:09):
ridicule from the crowd and um, which is unfortunate. And
then finally the order is given to fire point blank.
But Low said that the metal be injured, not killed.
And Um, it's it's not just that the orders are
the people in charge are reluctant to give the orders.
The men are are reluctant to carry them out. They
don't feel right shooting um a civilian point blank in
(20:33):
their inn city, which makes sense, definitely, It wasn't something
that they wanted to do. But in the end they
do end up shooting on their orders. And this is
from an account of the terrific and fatal riot at
the New York Astro Placed Opera House. At last, the
awful word was given to fire. There was a gleam
of sulfurous light, a sharp, quick rattle, and here and
(20:55):
there in the crowd a man sunk upon the pavement
with a deep groan or a death rattle. So by
the third volley or so, the bystanders had dispersed, and
by the fourth the shooting seems pretty much unnecessary, so
they stopped. Yeah. Yeah, most people consider the fourth round
was uncalled for. Um. But at the end of the
whole thing, anywhere from twenty two to twenty four people
(21:18):
were dead, depending on which account you look at, and
most of them were bystanders, young working men with Irish
last names. Approximately a hundred people are wounded. A lot
of those are the soldiers hit by stones and um,
you know, this rage about the whole thing continues for
a little while. Their bonfires the next day to protest
(21:40):
the masaker. Um. Eventually, though, the tension started to die
down and McCready, of course, I mean he's not about
to be lured into a second return. Um. He gets
back to England as soon as possible for his farewell
tour there. He retired playing Macbeth in eight fifty and
in England, and he died twenty two years later. Um
(22:03):
Forest though, has kind of a sadder fate. I would say, yeah,
his reputation was seriously damaged after all of this, and
especially later when he was best known for this lawsuit
he was in with his actress wife. He sued his
wife for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and he
ended up losing the case, but he kept appealing it
(22:24):
for the next eighteen years. It was kind of the
scandal that was in the news, and he was kind
of almost known for that more than his acting, seems well.
And I mean he was known for these two scandals,
two very apparently very big scandals in the nineteenth century,
and his name is attached to both of them. Maybe
a little too much press um And according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
(22:45):
Forest spent his later years in quote his gloomy Philadelphia
mansion and he died only a few months before McCready. Um.
But kind of a final note on this whole thing,
if you're going to look at the broader history of
theatrical riots, there's a really great website called Shakespeare in
American Life. It's part of the folder Shakespeare Library and
(23:08):
I used it a lot um for the ship the
Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown episode two, which was about the tempest. Um.
But it's great. You know, their placards, pictures of the actors,
interviews with experts, um. And there's also some commentary from
Professor Bruce McConochie, who we mentioned earlier. And um. Apparently
(23:31):
theatrical riots had been really common before the Astra Place riot,
but they didn't continue too long after it. And part
of the reason why is because the municipal police department's
got a lot stronger around the middle of the century,
and so a riot like this just wasn't allowed to happen.
Of course there's still riots, but riots in um a
(23:53):
setting that should be so controlled, just didn't happen as much.
I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I'm glad we
can get the theater and piece these days. And that
brings us to listener mail. This letter is from Bethany,
and she says, Dear Sarah and Dablina, I just finished
listening to all of the stuff you missed in history
(24:14):
class podcasts and have really enjoyed them. But after listening
to the episode about the five amazing astronomical discoveries, I
just wanted to give Galileo some credit. While it would
definitely be painful and foolish to look through a telescope
at the sun, that's actually not how Galileo discovered sun spots. Rather,
he would hold a piece of paper at the eyepiece
of the telescope and trace the sun spots in the
(24:35):
light that came through the telescope. I learned this while
reading Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel, which I highly recommend. Well,
thank you Bethany for that cool little insight into Galileo's discovery.
Galilet's Daughter is actually one that's been on my list
for a while books to read. Yeah, and definitely after
the both the Tico Brahe podcasts and the Five Astronomical Discoveries,
(24:58):
I'm a lot more interested in the strong to me
now than I used to comman astronomy buff. Definitely, that's
what happened. Um. If you have any other favorite galle stories,
or if you have anything about theatrical history or Shakespeare,
I mean, Shakespeare podcasts have been pretty fun. I gonna
I'm gonna go out and say that. Yeah, and there's
many more that we could do. I mean, that's a
(25:18):
great thing about Shakespeare. There's always more stories exactly. So
if you have any great suggestions, feel free to email
us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on
Facebook where I'm going to definitely post this claquer that
helped incite the riot. Um And if you want to
search for any fun articles, you can do so by
(25:40):
going to our homepage at www dot how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
becausit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper
right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone
up has a rise. Download it today on iTunes Boom
(26:04):
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